Jamie Oliver: Happy Days Tour Live! (2002)
Review by Dindrane
Film:
DVD:

Starring Jamie Oliver

Features:

• Recipes
  
• Photo gallery
  
• Interview
  
• Text bio
  

Rating: NR, suitable for all audiences

Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format

My Advice: Buy it

As always with the kinetically-charged Oliver, his shows are half cooking, half comedy--and this show adds audience involvement, special effects, and even a musical number. What more could you ask for?

The disc was filmed live to a sell-out crowd in London’s Apollo theatre. The show begins with a bit of an overly extended sequence showing Oliver getting ready for the show, etc., and then brings him onstage, to what is ostensibly his new flat, complete with appliances, magical herb window, and kitchen computer. Then, Oliver commences to preparing some of his trademark quick and devilishly tasty dishes, often intercut with films of his wife, friends, or workplace. Some of the dishes Oliver prepares are a couple of versions of pizza, a chocolate cheesecake, chicken in salt, and a lamb curry.

This show is much more than a simple cooking show, however. Along the way, we are treated to audience interaction that leads to a “pasta challenge” cook-off, a Spanish senorita with almost as much personality as Oliver himself, and a little boy who looks like he’ll be as much trouble as Jamie when he grows up. In addition, Oliver, along with his band, wrote a little ditty to lamb curry, a dish that Oliver cooks, and then accompanies on the drums as the jukebox belts out the tune. Hilarious and fun!

The extras are also quite delightful. We have a shortish interview with Oliver himself, but he’s able to pack more laughs and information into the six minutes or so than most anyone else could have. We also have a photo gallery that shows everything from darling baby to the expert cook we know today, and a text biography that will answer all of your questions about our favorite chef. The only caveat is that the biography is a bit hard to read, superimposed as it is over a collage background. Lastly, we have the recipes for everything Oliver cooks, including the separate pieces, like the bread dough and the pasta dough. These recipes include links that will take you back to that segment of his cooking show, so you can not only read the recipe and his directions, but see him cooking it all over again, along with the extra hints and motions that make cooking a success.

Half rock star and half chef, Jamie Oliver is a show in himself, not to be missed. Fans of Oliver’s show, The Naked Chef, will absolutely want to have this disc in their collection. Yes, you could probably get the recipes at least online somewhere, but as always with Jamie, it’s the show that counts. Besides, it’s such a helpful, nice trick to get to skip direction to that segment of the show when you look up the recipe, that it will make your next dinner party that much more successful to watch him at work. If you aren’t much of a cook now, you probably will be after watching this disc.